Nothing to It: Reading Freud As a Philosopher

Description

The confrontation between philosophy and psychoanalysis has had its heyday. After the major debates between Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Henry, this dialogue now seems to have broken down. It has therefore proven necessary and gainful to revisit these debates to explore their re-usability and the degree to which they can provide new insights from a contemporary point of view. It can be said that contemporary philosophy suffers from an 'excess of meaning', and this is exactly where psychoanalysis comes in and may raise key questions. This is precisely what a philosophical reading of Freud demonstrates. To say 'Nothing to It' indicates that the 'It'—or Freudian Id—is not visible as it never shows itself as a 'phenomenon'. Such a reading of Freud exemplifies how psychoanalysis has a special role to play in phenomenology's development. NothingToIt_cov 9789461663214 Table of Contents Foreword by Philippe Van Haute Preface Opening Act: Philosophizing in psychoanalysis The doctrine of experience The other Rubicon The backlash Introduction: Go take a look Chapter One: Keep moving, nothing to see The end of the Enlightenment Toward another paradigm Collapse of the system Chapter Two: Beware of it Conceiving the inconceivable The disillusion of psychoanalysis Primitive man Chapter Three: It’s not nothing The drive at the frontier Rooting in the organic Presence and resistance Chapter Four: What is it? A disturbing uncanny Death and repetition The anorganic Chapter Five: It concerns me Being lived The knight of the id Being there for something Chapter Six: It touches me Where the id was The draining of the Zuyderzee The great cavalcade Conclusion: What’s God have to do with it? For the salvation of the id Apart from it The realm of the id Epilogue: Regarding all of it Notes Bibliography Index rerum Index nominum